


Against Such Things

by redonthefly



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (sort of), Christmas, Gen, M/M, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas time in New York City.<br/>Time for love, joy. Peace, if you can shake it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against Such Things

There’s a time for everything in the universe.

That’s what his mama told him all the time growing up, tapping his cheek with one of her fingers, then finishing with a bop on the nose. _“You can’t force something out of its time, Sam Wilson; it's best you don’t try.”_

He took it to heart. It has served him pretty well, he thinks. When he visits home, the Sunday evening preacher reads about the Fruits of the Spirit from the pulpit, grand in long, plain robes and the purple Advent sash, his voice comforting and low, aged and worn gravel, and the Bible in his hands the same as it’s always been, soft red leather held in one broad, cracked hand.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Sam shifts in his seat, feels the cushion sliding a little underneath him and clasps his hands in his lap while Reverend Thomas pulls off his reading glasses, and tucks them carefully into the vee at the neck of his vestments.

“I understand, given the season, that you may have come tonight expecting to hear about the birth of the Christ Child. And I’ll get to that,” he says, when the congregation titters, “but this evening we’re going to talk about the spirit of Christ embodied in his people. If you want to bring Christ back into Christmas, this is how to begin…”

Sam closes his eyes and lets the words fall over him. Peace.

He can hear his mother in his ear, an echo of his childhood while he sits the church he grew up in, all familiar angles and shadows: everything from the hats pinned to proud steel curls, the sharp smell of lemon scented wood polish, the way the velvet on the pew cushions has been rubbed pinkish pale, nearly threadbare from the press of bodies and years.

_“If you want something, work as hard as you can to get it. And then if it doesn’t happen? Then baby, you have to wait. See if the Lord delivers. And if He doesn’t, maybe then if means you weren’t supposed to have it after all.”_

Patience.

If there was ever a thing to pray for.

The service ends an hour later, and Sam turns up the lapel of his coat against the December air, and pushes out with the crowd – for an evening service it’s a pretty mixed bag: teenagers in ripped jeans who trail after their parents, old women in jewel toned coats, babies swaddled and sleepy against their mothers breasts.  

Sam likes that. There are always babies. A newness, a promise. You can only get so bitter when there are big brown eyes peering at you from under their little knit caps and capes. So what if they’re clutched just a little tighter these days? Everyone holds their precious things closer now.

He winds his way through the press of chattering people, shrugs off the sound of Christmas hymns, and hurries down the stone steps and onto the sidewalk, eager to be away before anyone recognizes him. Sam doesn’t have the same public face as his friends do, but he’s not anonymous these days either, and when someone calls your mother and you end up on the receiving end of the little-old-lady phone tree of good intentions, it’s a little more likely that you may get pulled aside for a Harlem heart to heart.

There are things he misses about New York, and there are things he doesn’t, that’s all.

It takes a couple of blocks, but as soon as the sidewalk traffic clears to a trickle, a shadow peels off the exposed brick of an alleyway and joins him to walk shoulder to shoulder.

“You could have come in, you know.” Sam says, voice low. “Got a coffee from the mezzanine or something, instead of waiting out here to freeze like some self-flagellating idiot.”

“I do not…flagellate.”

“Man, you were waiting in an _alley_. At night. In _December_.”

Steve shrugs, and digs his hands a little deeper into his pockets. “Didn’t exactly feel like I belonged in a church, is all. Been a long time.”

Sam rolls his eyes but only says “How long after I left did you decide to follow me here?”

“About ten minutes,” Steve admits, and even manages to sound a little sheepish.

“Ten minutes to miss me, huh?”

“Shut up.”

Sam chuckles, and they walk in silence for a few more minutes, passing little clusters of people going about their end-of-day errands, walking dogs and stuttering under the weight of laden grocery bags. He’s mostly not paying attention to where they’re going – Steve is half a step in front of him, and they are almost out of his old neighborhood, a place where the darkened windows of the shops and flickering neon of the corner bodegas (all that’s open here on a Sunday night) start to look less familiar, a tiny bit new around the edges, without the comfortably worn in feel of the painted brick and stubby grass that pushes out of the cracks in the sidewalk, persistent even in this cold weather.

That’s okay. He doesn’t have anywhere else to be, not particularly.

“I did come in,” Steve says, breaking their companionable silence. They’ve hit a busier intersection, and he walks over to punch the button on the crossing signal before shuffling back over next to Sam. Steve has a habit of hunching his shoulders when he’s revealing something personal, Sam has noticed. There’s nothing in the world that can make a man his size appear smaller, but the impression is very much that he would prefer to sink into the ground before opening his mouth at all, but he will, inevitably, because he is Steve Rogers.

In the last six months, Sam has become pretty well acquainted with Steve’s particular brand of stubbornness. He won’t even exempt himself, which is pretty damn impressive, all things considered.

“I stood in the back for a little while,” he continues. “You know, the church I went to as a kid – mom was Catholic – it was big like that. All stone and tall ceilings, and this huge long red carpet all the way from the pulpit to the back doors and the confessional booths.”

He slides Sam a glance, and Sam shrugs, a gesture of ‘please continue’, because it’s clear that a) Steve isn’t just chatting to fill the space and b) not anywhere near his point.

“We saw some of the big country cathedrals in Europe too. I mean, they weren’t big I guess. But big for these little towns – we’d come through, and the whole place would be flattened except for the church. Even when they were as bombed out and scorched as everything else, the steeple was almost always up."

The crossing sign begins to beep, and they move forward across the street, jogging a little to beat the numbers ticking down on the other side, dodging the people coming the other way. It’s dark enough now that the street lights and shop signs are the only lights, but this is New York, so it doesn’t feel dark at all, just wrapped up in an orange glow and the swirl of oncoming headlights.

“So anyway, that’s where we slept most nights when out on assignment. Churches. Easier to pack up when you don’t have to roll up your tent, nicer than being out in the open, even if half the ceiling was gone.”

“I think – ” and Steve pauses, stilling on the sidewalk, “I think that’s the first time I’ve been in a church since sometime in 1944.” He tilts his head to one side, then smiles a little. “Didn’t figure I’d be breaking my spell in a Baptist one though.” His grin turns a little wicked, and Sam punches him on the shoulder.

“Man, shut _up_.” They start walking again, meandering north along an empty park. “My ma brought me to that place every Sunday from before I could walk until I was 18 and in the service. I’m pretty sure she even made me go once when I had the chicken pox.”

“And look how you turned out.”

“ _Exactly_. _Now_ he gets it.”

Steve laughs for real, jostling his shoulder companionably. Steve, Sam knows, is not particularly given to casual touches; at least, not all the friendly little intimacies of 21st century living, where waitstaff encourage better tips by putting their hands on your shoulder, or strangers press in close on the subway, trying to eek out a tiny bit of extra space for themselves. It might not be a generational gap at all - hell if Sam knows anyway - but the only times he's seen Steve physically reach out and touch someone in the six months he's been in his near constant company has been twice with Natasha, and one of those times he was boosting her over a wall, which hardly counts.

He's seen the old footage though, grainy black and white films with Steve clapping a hand on Bucky's back, smile wide and genuine and joyfully unrestrained. So it's a good feeling, he thinks, jostling Steve back, being someone he's comfortable to be around. Sam has learned to go a long way on little things.

Next to him in the dim, Steve's smile has slid slightly more toward thoughtful again. "So what brought you back?"

"Come again?"

"Why did you want to come here tonight? We've passed through New York plenty of times. Never wanted to stop before."

Sam waits, considers, then answers carefully. "You remember your childhood, man? And no, I don't just mean 'do you remember the Depression' or something, but parts of who you were growing up? Like, okay." He stops, runs a hand over his head and thinks. Steve stares at him, waiting.

"Alright, so you have this memory. _Perfect_ childhood memory. The thing that never tarnished for you when you looked back, so you've got this crystallized in your head, this thing from when you were a kid. And it's...part curiosity to see whether it's as good as you have thought it was all this time."

"Sure, I guess."

"Yeah, well so do I." Steve nods.

"So that's church. For you."

"That's a _Christmas_ service," Sam clarifies, and Steve nods again. "Advent is pretty close, anyway." They were a few weeks from Christmas still, but close enough to special services, for strings of lights in the shop windows, and plastic garlands wound around park benches.

He would have liked to have seen his mother, but he'll take what he can get, standing in the cold wind on the southern end of Harlem, facing the greater city lights. He can call her, maybe get her on the phone before they fly out in the morning. She’ll be pissed as hell he didn’t come to see her, but at least they’ll be in the same timezone. Sam hates converting the time. It reminds him of sand and dropped signals and the sense that it might be the last call he makes.   

"Seems like a pretty big risk to take," Steve says quietly, and Sam shrugs.

"Yeah, well. Sometimes you gotta do that. See if what you remember is real." Steve's mouth twists a little when he says that, but in typical  Steve Rogers style, he doesn't say anything, just dips his head into the wind and keeps walking, leading them deeper into the park.  

"Did it work out for you?" He asks a minute or two later, when they’ve found a bench next to the path, and sunk into it. Steve still has his hands shoved deep into his pockets, pushing against the fabric to the point where, if it were lighter out, Sam knows he’d be able to count his knuckles under the heavy material. He’s been with a stressed out Steve Rogers for a while know. It’s a gesture he’s familiar with. "Your memory. Was it worth it?"

Sam hmmms a little, thinking. "Well for starters, that is not a true Christmas service, no matter how much I'd like it to be. For one thing, no candle lighting at the end, no one singing 'Silent Night', and the minister wouldn't have given a sermon so much as read the Christ story in pieces, lighting the candles.

"Also, I did not see a single person in velvet, and Steve, dude, it is not Christmas until you see fifty old ladies and babies in red velvet dresses and white lace. It's like they're trying to summon Santa Claus himself, I am not exaggerating.

"So anyway, I'm thinking it's not a true measure."

"Safe for another year then, at least." Steve's voice is wry, and a little tired. "The only real memory I have - of a church at least, a good one - is Bucky 'n me racing up that red carpet leading up the aisle. We must have been really young," he adds, as though it's an afterthought. "We were altar boys sometimes when we were a little older, too. But I don't really remember Christmases."

"None at all?"

"At this exact moment?" Steve fixes him a look. "Not really. Just - other things. I told you, it's been a long time since I was in a church."

"So why'd you follow me into one?"

Steve doesn’t answer right away, just scuffs his foot against the line where the dirty December grass is trying to overgrow the tidy asphalt patch under the bench, kicking dirt onto his shoes, head cocked to one side. A few other evening walkers pass them, and he ducks his head when they nod at the two of them. Once they’ve passed, he smiles at his feet, the faraway smile, and speaks softly.

“We were religious growing up, but you know. Most of the people we knew were, in some way or another, if for no other reason than it was something to do.” Steve chuckles a little. “It was part of life, I guess. You don’t question that stuff so much when you’re a kid. You sing the songs and put your coin in the plate, and that’s holy.”

Steve slumps back on the bench, bringing his hands up from where they’d been resting on his knees into a waffling gesture, weighing. “Then you get a little older and it’s harder to pass that coin up when it may be the difference between fresh bread or moldy. And you’re working Sundays anyway, so it doesn’t matter as much.”

“So much for Catholic guilt,” Sam says wryly, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Not my point, asshole.”

“Sorry.”

“Those nights spent in churches in Europe were the most time I’d been in a church in years. And it felt...blessed, almost,  these huge grand churches with their steeples still upright after everything. They made you feel sanctified. For just a little bit. Before. You know. Before it was _war_.”

Sam knows. War is war is war, and he can picture the chapel tent in the desert, hear the low voices of men reciting prayers. He remembers the faces of new soldiers, lined up scrubbed pink and serious waiting for services, and he remembers how the group would dwindle, shrink by ones or twos until there was nearly no one left.

After a while, it gets pretty hard to see God in blood and violence and death; the body of the faithful taking their casualties in more ways than the flesh.

Sam’s not sure where he stands most days, not anymore, but it’s a comfortable mask to wear, and everyone has theirs - he’s not going to worry himself about hiding behind something that encourages him to be a better human. There’s not enough time. It never feels like there is quite enough time.

“I came in because I think I wanted to feel that again,” Steve says, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Like maybe God was real. Because maybe, if He was listening -” He stops, visibly cutting short his thought and running his thumbs along his temples, sighing deeply. Sam doesn’t need him to continue, because his thoughts are right there on his sleeve anyway.

_Maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. Maybe, if God was real, maybe Bucky’d come back._

Seems like Steve Rogers has been doing a little praying of his own, and ain’t that a thing. Praying isn’t simple either though, that Sam understands. You put on the mask, you come to your old neighborhood. But boys grow up. They go to war. It takes more than pennies in the offering plate to feel like you’re home and safe.

They sit like that that for a while, Steve rubbing his forehead in little circles, staring at the concrete, Sam with his head up in the wind. Across the street a Salvation Army Santa is ringing a collection bell, and people drop in coins as they pass; somewhere, someone is playing Bing Crosby at a volume unheard of for _Bing Crosby_ , and the air is starting to taste a little like snow, metallic under the bite of cold.  

Christmas time in New York City.

Time for love, joy. Peace, if you can shake it.  

“You think we’ll find him, Sam?”

_If you want something, work as hard as you can to get it. Then you wait and see if the Lord delivers._

Patience too.

“Sure,” says Sam. “Yeah man. I think we will.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Galatians 5:22-23  
> But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
> 
> I haven't been to church in a long time, which probably shows.


End file.
